A Happy Place
by igniteXtheXairwaves
Summary: Leave it to me to play the hero. The afterlife from Axel's POV. Axel and Roxas. No angst, no tragedy-- just sarcasm, and maybe something you might consider a teensy bit of fluff...maybe. Oneshot.


**Warnings:** Umm, there might be swearing? I don't remember. So I'm rating it T just to be safe.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters. The only things in this story that belong to me are the words and the idea.

**Author's Note**: Umm, so, it's really late. Okay, not _really _late, but its midnight. And I've been writing this for maybe three hours. Because it suddenly came to me and wouldn't get out of my head. Anyway, I was inspired by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . . . the scene with Dumbledore . . . in Kings Cross Station . . . if you know what I'm talking about, then you have an idea of what to expect, but if you don't, I guess you'll just have to be _surprised._

* * *

Leave it up to me to play the _hero_.

Not that I minded. I mean, sure, I was dead. No biggie. I'd always thought of death as something _exciting_, you know? Just another challenge, another adventure.

What I didn't expect was this infuriating lack of _anything. _

I wasn't sure if I was even _functioning _anymore. If I could see, hear, feel. If I was a being, a physical being, or if I was just a consciousness, a personality, a thought. I didn't _know_.

I was alone. Maybe.

It was dark. Possibly.

My eyes were open.

Or maybe they were closed.

I couldn't be _sure_.

_That's_ what I'm trying to say-- I _couldn't freaking tell. _I had _no_ _way_ of judging _anything_.

I was just _there_. Or maybe I wasn't _any_where.

I tried to move, to twitch my fingers, wiggle my toes, open my mouth, _any_thing-- but nothing happened. Or something happened and I didn't know it.

_Ugh. _

With nothing better to do, I sat there and I thought. I thought about a lot of things-- Organization XIII. The Nobodies. Kingdom Hearts. Roxas. Sora. People I'd killed. People I'd died for.

But mostly Roxas.

I don't know how long I was there for. I don't know how long I thought about these things, but at one point, a change occurred.

It was subtle, yet simultaneously it was blatantly obvious. It was like, one moment I was alone in my thoughts, the next someone else was there with me. I'm not sure how I could tell, but I just _knew_ it. I could _sense _them, feel their skin under my nonexistent fingertips, and most importantly I could hear their voice. Or rather, not their _voice_, parse. . . I'm actually not _exactly _sure how to freaking _explain_ this whole ordeal, but this person was there and they were speaking, not with words and not out loud, but I _heard_ them.

"Is somebody here?" They asked, unsure and soft, and I could feel their hands exploring the area around them though there were no hands, and suddenly I knew what -- or rather, _who_ -- this being was, and I smiled though I had no lips to speak of.

"Yeah," I answered, finally able to speak, as if just his _presenc_e made me more . . . _real. _

Maybe that's the thing. Maybe _no one's _real. Maybe no one _exists_ unless others exist _with _them.

But I'll try not to go all _philosophical _on you. Promise.

"Axel?" I could hear a smile in his voice. Or his…not-voice? Huh.

"And how was _your_ day, Roxas?" I asked oh-so-casually, and he let out a small laugh, but he still sounded troubled.

"Axel, you're. . .dead." He said it bluntly. As if I didn't _know_.

Unfortunately, I was completely and _utterly_ aware of this fact. I'd only been floating in this state of _nonexistence_ for all of _n_-hours.

"Yeah," I replied with a short, humorless laugh. "I know." Then my brow furrowed -- I think, or it _would have _if it was there -- as a thought occurred to me. "Rox…_you're _dead, too."

It's funny-- it was like, in this state of being, things were _so_ much more…_intimate_. I swear I could almost _hear _him smirk as he answered in a slightly teasing tone, "Yeah. I know."

"Did you join with Sora, or did you get killed before you could?"

"Mmm. Joined with him."

Then…why was Roxas dead…?

There was only one explanation: Sora had died, also.

A wave of annoyance passed through me at the thought.

Because if Sora had gone and died after I'd sacrificed myself for _his _freaking cause, then I would personally _labor_ my way out of this place-- this _state_ -- this -- _whatever_ it was, reincarnate him, and re-kill him _myself._

Of course, it _could've_ been that Sora had gotten old. Died of natural causes.

It _could've_ been that I had been in this God-forsaken place for _decades. _

Oh, _God_. Don't even _think _that, Axel.

"Don't tell me Sora went and got himself killed by Xemnas."

He chuckled. "Nah. Sora's fine. "

I sighed. Every word he spoke was making me more and more _confused_, I _swear. _

"Then why are you _here_?"

A shoulder-less shrug. "I guess. . .that when a Nobody joins their opposite, the person they're based on, the person they…spawned from? I guess its equivalent to them dying. I mean, I stayed with Sora 'till he killed Xemnas, and then I had this . . . urge to _disappear_. To run away." He laughed a little, without humor. "Maybe we Nobodies were really Somebodies. Maybe we didn't actually become Nobodies 'till we came into contact with our Other."

"And then, as Nobodies, we were forced to disappear," I agreed quietly. I mean, it was a theory.

'Course, no way to _prove_ it. Especially not where _we_ were.

"Yeah." He frowned-- I could hear the expression, sense it, feel it under fingers that weren't there, beneath lips that didn't exist. "Axel," he continued after a moment, "where are we?"

"Ah," I replied quietly. "The golden question."

"You don't know." He sighed sheepishly, and for a moment I could've sworn that I could see the downcast eyes, the slight smile, the _expression_ that _went_ with that sigh. But I was probably imagining it. "I didn't think you would. Where do you _think_ we are?"

"Hmmm." I pondered playfully for a moment, then suggested, "Perhaps we're in _Heaven_, Roxas."

That got a small laugh out of him.

"No," I continued, serious now. "I'm not sure. Maybe we're ghosts? Maybe this is how it feels to be a ghost?"

Roxas seemed skeptical. "I don't think so. I think ghosts are able to at least…you know, have some _familiarity_ with their _surroundings_."

"Then you can't see me? Or _any_thing, for that matter"

"I don't know. Sometimes I _think_ I can see you, but it's like, the moment I _do_, the image changes to black."

"Yeah. Same here. But you can _hear_ me, obviously."

"Yeah. Well-- _kind _of. It feels almost like…" _He _struggled for a way to explain it, and _I _struggled for a way to explain it. It was -- _is_ -- such a hard experience to explain.

"_Thoughts_," I finally finished with an air of triumph mingled with relief. "It feels like I can _hear your thoughts_."

"Exactly." He smiled, prompting another question from me.

"Are you smiling?"

He seemed to immediately understand the importance of this question.

"I. . . I guess so?" He replied in puzzlement. "How can you tell?"

"Can you tell when I smile? Or, I don't know, frown? Or roll my eyes?" To test, I acted out the expressions as I named them.

"Yeah. I can. I didn't notice before. . .Why is that?"

"It's not that I can _see_ you smile…" I said thoughtfully. "It's more like I can _feel _it."

"Sense it," he agreed.

"Right." I laughed then, a not-exactly-humorless laugh, because this was all so ridiculous. It was like-- a puzzle. A _game. _A smirk still on my face, I repeated the initial question, with a tone of slight annoyance, slight amusement, and slightly-more-than-slight incredulity: "Where _are_ we, Rox?"

"Limbo?" He mused, and again I was nearly convinced that I could see him, right in front of me, relaxing as he pondered our predicament, but then he wasn't there.

It was a rather convincing idea. Of course, the fact that we were Nobodies -- having never really been _alive_, yet at the same time and for the same reason unable to die -- suggested that we had, in theory, _always_ been in Limbo.

That thought -- the one of Nobodies -- led into another. "Maybe this is how, _where_, all Nobodies end up after they Fade."

"Do you feel any _other _Organization XIII members lurking around in here?"

I sighed. "Right."

We were silent, both caught up in our own thoughts and theories. Time passed. Or maybe it didn't.

I still wasn't quite sure how things worked around here, after all.

Anyway, Roxas eventually inquired curiously, _albeit_ irrelevantly, "What did you think would happen after death, Axel? I mean, before you died."

"Huh?" I said stupidly, taken a bit off-guard by the question. When my mind -- or lack thereof -- finally processed what he'd asked, I muttered, "Uh, I don't know… I guess I always thought that I'd go to-- well, you know. My _happy place_. The place where I most wanted to be." Out loud, it sounded kind of stupid.

"Hm." Roxas seemed to think for a moment, then suggested very, ah, suggestively, "That sounds…kind of accurate. For me, I mean. Besides, you know-- this Limbo, this nothingness."

I smiled. I'd gotten it. I understood, though he was being subtle-- he was too shy to be bold with that kind of thing. But I wasn't dim-witted. I wished I could see him, touch him, _kiss_ him. 'Cause his happy place was with _me_.

"But that doesn't explain why _you_ came _here_," he continued then, dismissing his new theory as quickly as he'd come up with it.

"Un_less_, of course," I pointed out, "my 'happy place' didn't exist yet in death. Maybe _that's _why I came here into this…emptiness. Because the place where I most wanted to be was still, you know-- alive."

"But now it's not," Roxas continued pointedly, almost cautiously, after a moment.

"Right." I smiled. "Now it's not."

"'Kay, then," he said slowly, perhaps trying to get a point across to me, or to himself. "Then why are we still in Limbo? Shouldn't we have . . . I don't know . . . Poofed somewhere _else _by now?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it-- I mean, _'poofed'_? It was such an . . . un-Roxas-like word.

"For lack of a better word," he mumbled in embarrassment. "I'm _serious, _okay?"

"Okay, okay," I agreed, with one last snicker. "Uhm . . . okay, why are we still in _Limbo _. . . Er . . ." He waited very _patiently_. That was sarcasm. I made sure to think a _little _bit longer than necessary. Finally, when I figured he'd suffered long enough, I replied, "Maybe because our 'happy place' isn't really a _place_ at all? So, like, in _theory, _it could be . . . anywhere at all."

He frowned. "So it's . . . nowhere?"

"Or, alternatively, it's _any_where."

"What?"

"I don't know," I chuckled. "I'm confusing _myself_. Ignore me."

"No," he said, sounding determined, enlightened, like he'd just had an epiphany or something. "I think you're right. We could be _anywhere_. We have the _ability _to be anywhere."

"Oh." Well, that made sense. Kind of. Maybe. "You mean, if we just _wanted _to be somewhere…"

"We _could _be there." He paused before adding in a less sure tone, "Maybe."

"Well, then, I want to be in Twilight Town," I mused. "Nice place."

He smirked. I was only joking. We both knew it.

And yet, suddenly, we _were _in Twilight Town. In the middle of the Struggle Arena.

Or . . . our _surroundings_ were Twilight Town. I still couldn't see him. I still couldn't feel anything. But Twilight Town was all around us.

"Roxas, you _smarty_," I teased. He smiled.

"I want to be able to see you," he tested, and added after a moment, "And I want you to be able to see me."

It worked, too. He was there, suddenly, and yet it was as if he'd always _been _there.

I looked at him, his gold hair, spiky and messy and, let's just _admit it_, _adorable_. His eyes were as big and blue as ever, with the usual quiet reservedness to them, but for the first time in a _long _time, perhaps even for the first time ever, he looked . . . at peace.

"He_llo_," I said in a joking tone, grinning like a madman.

"Hi," he replied, and he smirked, a very _Roxas-like _expression. And then I gathered him up in my arms, happy to see him, happy to _be _here-- happy to escape that never-ending, timeless, _infuriating _emptiness that I'd been _stuck _in for God _knows _how long.

"Still in your happy place?" he murmured into my shoulder, only half-jokingly.

"_Oh, _yeah," I breathed and smiled. I was definitely still in my happy place. Even though I was dead, I was with Roxas. On top of that, I'd had a good death. A nice, honorable, _bad-ass_ death.

After all, I'd played the hero.


End file.
